LOS ALAMOS DISKS SLIPPED

9 Dec 2003

Los Alamos National Laboratory has a long, icky history of losing computer disks, hard drives, and laptops. And today, officials at the super-sensitive nuclear weapons lab admitted that they can't find eight disks which may contain classified information."This situation is totally unacceptable," said Los Alamos director Pete Nanos in a statement.But its a repeat of past performances, argues the watchdog group Project on Government Oversight. In January 2002, Los Alamos "admitted that it had lost computer media but denied that it contained classified information," according to the group. And "in November 2002, documents leaked to POGO showed that more than 200 computers were missing, some from top secret programs."Before that, in 2000, two hard drives containing nuclear weapons secrets went missing. They were eventually found behind a Los Alamos photocopier.